Posted
by
Soulskillon Wednesday July 11, 2012 @05:29PM
from the can-of-worms dept.

An anonymous reader writes with news of a study out of the University of Florida which found that alcohol is the biggest "gateway" drug, the use of which increases the likelihood of other drug use. Quoting:
"In the sample of students, alcohol also represented the most commonly used substance, with 72.2 percent of students reporting alcohol consumption at some point in their lifetime. Comparatively, 45 percent of students reported using tobacco, and 43.3 percent cited marijuana use. In addition, the drug use documented found that substance use typically begins with the most socially acceptable drugs, such as alcohol and cigarettes, then proceeds to marijuana use and finally to other illegal, harder drugs. Moreover, the study showed that students who used alcohol exhibited a significantly greater likelihood — up to 16 times — of licit and illicit substance use."

The "Elephant in the room" is caffeine. Why is society not prepared to deal with this menace, that makes drugs socially acceptable from an early age?99% of heroin addicts admit to having used caffeine in some form before they were sixteen.

Also, Alcohol is a lot more dangerous than Marijuana, causing aggression (in some), loss of control, impaired motor functions coupled with a sense of still being in control, liver cirrhosis, cancer and brain damage.

On the side of Marijuana, there is a slight lung cancer risk and a moderate risk of depressions. In fact, the damage law enforcement does is probably more significant then what the stuff itself does.

let me correct that for you, "On the side of Marijuana are some risks dependent upon the method upon the method of consumption, there are some psychological problems but these are largely associated with predisposition and using it under an atmosphere of illegality and threat of extreme violence from authorities."

Legalizing doesn't make the psychosis go away. In the Netherlands it's legal and there are plenty of fucked up people smoking themselves into an even more fucked up state, instead of dealing with their crap and getting on with their life without smoking.

Yes but that's kinda the point. Alcohol fucks people up even worse, yet it's legal. It's inconsistent to claim that marijuana is illegal because of outcome A when alcohol is legal but causes outcome A in even more people. We need to either ban alcohol, or legalize marijuana - and banning alcohol just doesn't work.

Quite a lot of people do this to themselves with alcohol. And generally, alcohol has far more severely negative impact on the abusers themselves and on innocent bystanders.

People that do not deal with their issues do not have a drug problem, they have a personality defect in the first place. If not one drug, they would just use another. Legalizing Marijuana would reduce the severity of the negative effects, as it is more benign than alcohol, but still provides the escape these people seek. And there is no way in hell to successfully remove alcohol from society. The US prohibition failed. Even Islamic countries with medieval, drastic penalties have large numbers of alcoholics. That approach does not work.

And on a related note, criminalizing responsible, recreational use of mild drugs by adults is not justifiable ethically.

yep. look at australian aboriginal communities. the alcohol is much much worse than the weed. cops usually don't bother enforcing weed because there's so little risk of violence occurring as a result of it. alcohol on the other hand... well, quite a lot of places in australia actually have prohibition for that reason.

Also, Alcohol is a lot more dangerous than Marijuana, causing aggression (in some), loss of control, impaired motor functions coupled with a sense of still being in control, liver cirrhosis, cancer and brain damage.

On the side of Marijuana, there is a slight lung cancer risk and a moderate risk of depressions. In fact, the damage law enforcement does is probably more significant then what the stuff itself does.

The main negative side effect of marijuana is the incredibly smug self righteousness it causes in its users and fans.

Everyday life can trigger psychotic episodes in mentally ill people.So can odd noises, squirrels, religion and the voices that only they hear.

I have a close family member who suffers from mental illness, and I have to say that you are absolutely correct. He struggles constantly with things that he knows should be no big deal, yet evoke a debilitating paranoiac reaction, anyway.

Over the years, he's gotten a lot better at recognizing the early warning signals that a panic attack is coming, and changing his environment to hopefully avoid losing control. But man, is it ever a constant struggle for him, and his immediate family (he's a first cousin of

I bet the list of things that can trigger psychotic episodes in mentally ill people includes pretty much everything.

The only honest to goodness negative reaction I've ever seen with marijuana use (outside of the physical effects like smoking too much and getting the spins/nauseous) is increased anxiety, and that was only a couple times, both times involving someone that probably didn't want to smoke in the first place and was just doing so to "go along with the crowd" and hadn't really gotten high before, so the effects freaked them out.

In those cases, though, I find it hard to blame the weed itself for that; nobody should consume an intoxicating substance just to "fit in", but then we've all been to high school and now how THAT goes...

I tutored a guy who developed reasonably severe paranoia after heavy marijuana use.

THC is a psychoactive drug and just like any others it has potential negative side effects. Alcohol does too, of course, and some severe ones, but it's irresponsible and counterproductive to pretend THC doesn't have any. Anybody taking a drug, particularly a recreational one, should be aware of the possible negative side effects, make an informed decision, and use in moderation.

I'm about as laid back as they come and bother no-one. The other day my lighter ran out of fluid, so I went out in the garage to my car's lighter, then sat there in the driver's seat with the window rolled down smoking my joint in peace. Right as I was finishing up I noticed a cop drive by. There is no way he could have possibly seen me smoking but I got a bad feeling right then so I tossed out my blunt, rolled up the window, locked the car, then calmly walked in the house.

As I rounded the corner leaving the garage I saw that the cop had pulled into the next driveway down, kinda creepin along and riding his brakes, just like he was scoping out his rearview and thinking of getting out to walk my way. Thank God he missed his chance. I think he must have either smelled it as he drove by, or some anonymous do-gooder somewhere (no clue who it could be because I saw nobody else around) called him. Either way:

You see now why stoners are paranoid? Just like that one can get arrested, put in jail, and life ruined, even when one is totally and completely minding one's own business and hurting nobody.

Could be. HE attributed the paranoia to the pot. When he eased off, he said it went away.

Interesting. I can't say I'm totally surprised, given my experience with high-THC marijuana. It was some pretty intense stuff.

If it's abused, it can be addictive, and can cause problems in your work and personal lives.

Interesting story: I was contacted about 5 years ago by a former college roommate. He had been off of weed for about 18 months after having hit rock bottom. He lost his job, his girlfriend, and I forget what else. He reached out to tell me that through is ordeal with drug abuse, a particular offhand comment that I once made had stuck with him through it all.

I bet the list of things that can trigger psychotic episodes in mentally ill people includes pretty much everything.

The only honest to goodness negative reaction I've ever seen with marijuana use (outside of the physical effects like smoking too much and getting the spins/nauseous) is increased anxiety, and that was only a couple times, both times involving someone that probably didn't want to smoke in the first place and was just doing so to "go along with the crowd" and hadn't really gotten high before, so the effects freaked them out.

In those cases, though, I find it hard to blame the weed itself for that; nobody should consume an intoxicating substance just to "fit in", but then we've all been to high school and now how THAT goes...

On the other hand, I have "high anxiety" in that I used to suffer from panic attacks, but marijuana actually calms me and mitigates the attacks completely. Many people with high anxiety self-medicate with marijuana--in my case because I trust a plant that has been in continuous use by humans for thousands of years over a for-profit company that invents drugs by trial and error. On the other hand, I have encountered plenty of people who can't touch the stuff because it makes them paranoid and anxious and many of them benefit tremendously from prescription pharmaceuticals--to each their own. The effects vary by dose, strain, delivery method, and person. It's not for everyone, but others absolutely adore it. One thing it is not is addictive as anyone who was once a broke college student knows. I'm sure someone has linked to this essay [marijuana-uses.com] already, but Carl Sagan summed it up pretty well.

On a side note, I have two younger step-siblings. One has been off of heroin for a couple of years and the other is in rehab. Both got hooked in their teens. When I was a teenager, "everyone" knew that pot was completely harmless and that heroin was horribly addictive. Meth was a different story; it was the "new" drug and I saw a lot of people ruin their lives with that stuff. My siblings, on the other hand, grew up in the era of "Drugs are bad, mmm-kay" where they were taught that marijuana is a "gateway drug" and it is just as bad as all the others--a Schedule I narcotic just like LSD and heroin. The message they seemed to have absorbed is "I tried pot and it was pretty mellow--so all these other drugs can't be that bad." I mean, look at the propaganda on whitehouse.gov [whitehouse.gov]. Sure, they don't out-and-out lie, but they try so hard to make marijuana seem dangerous: "In 2009, marijuana was involved in 376,000 emergency department visits nationwide." Yah, and I bet 100% of those cases also involved alcohol! The LD50 for pot is about the same as H20... The point is that informing kids about drugs works--but not if you lie to them. No one told us about meth and all my step-siblings got was fact-free propaganda.

but who's to say that's not a positive effect?alcohol rips up your short term memory too and people get freaked up on alcohol way more often than from weed, even those with access to both.

anyways - alcohol is on a fucking totally different level than mary-jay. ever heard of anyone spending a week in the hospital from physical effects from weed? yeah, thought so. yet your local hospitals intensive care is filled (if you live in the west) 30% with people there due to drinking(pancreatitis, ulcer etc etc..). i

Even though there might be a slight drop in what some might perceive as "short term memory" (more like: verbal memory), there are also huge gains in other areas, i.e. creativity. The overall effect is a gain in intelligence and mental ability, not the opposite.

That is exactly what alcoholics say, you know.

I'm all in favour of heavy drinking and drug use, but to pretend they give you enhanced insight, creativity or whatever is really just a load of bollocks.

Get someone to record your drunk or drug-fuelled ideas and then play them back to you when you're sober. If you're Ernest Hemingway or Jimi Hendrix, you might possibly have some gold amongst the dross, but that's only because you're an artist to start with. Most people will just have dross, which is fine as long as they're not kidding themselves it's anything else.

Sorry dude - I grew up with burnouts. You have do a lot of weed for a long time, but they SURELY weren't any smarter in any way that was obvious to an external observer. They did seem pretty happy though - just sitting on the couch was a great day for them.

In my experience this is a psychological reaction to the sense of well being that marijuana gives. I have also known a lot of long time cannabis users who display this behaviour, and have even experienced it personally. The drug gives you a feeling that all is well and dampens the desire for having more possessions, status, power, etc. This is nothing to do with intelligence or memory, only with motivation. It may seem on the face of things to be a negative or detrimental effect, especially in a society whe

Being a daily user of over 10 years (both illegally and now legally) and having suffered a triggered psychotic episode, the problem is certain people like myself can be very sensitive to high THC levels. Many grower-bred strains, particularly Sativas, are bred for high THC levels as it's an active, energetic high and can be very pleasant. However, under the right conditions and a vulnerable individual, it can cause severe anxiety, racing thoughts (exacerbated even by paranoia of doing something illegal) and even outright delusions. Another substance in marijuana is CBD, which has the opposite effect, and is more prevalent in Indicas. Research has actually shown it to act as an antipsychotic, neuroprotectant, inhibit tumor growth in both brain and lung cancers, and generally makes you feel sleepy and sedated. On the street, you generally never know the levels in what you are getting, and even at some dispensaries, unless you know the strain and the of THC and CBD of that family. If you get a THC dominant strain and a vulnerable individual uses it, yes, it can trigger a psychotic episode. That said, now that I have access to safe, reliable and professionally grown marijuana where I know exactly the contents of strains, I can choose carefully and it has worked wonders for my chronic pain and anxiety.

It doesn't necessarily have to be related to trauma. I have one friend who self-medicates his General Anxiety disorder with marijuana. He was never beaten or abused or anything, he just happens to have the condition, and marijuana helps keep him calm, and it doesn't require him to take psychoactive drugs.

Luckily for him he telecommutes so he doesn't need to worry about covering it up (we're not a medical marijuana state)...

All right, tell you what, I'll meet you in the middle. Neither should be a scheduled substance (except with respect to regulation to prevent minors from getting at it, etc.).

My point was informed primarily by the overall harm of each drug. While I'm sure you may enjoy a glass of something now and then and are at little risk for falling into alcoholism and letting it control your life, not everyone can. Nobody's ever beaten their wife to death while stoned.

Over a decade ago, I used to get my weed through a guy who wasn't yet 21. He was dealing to pay to go to college without having to hold down a job at the same time. Every time I'd go to pick up from him (and I found he did this to several other over-21 clients as well), he made us go to the liquor store and buy him beer as part of his payment. His mother knew he was dealing, and why so many people came around, but I think she had decided that was better than joining a gang or failing his classes because he was working all night flipping burgers. She also didn't seem to have a problem with him drinking, but she refused to buy alcohol for him. (She did, however, smoke his weed.)

There was another guy who I bought from, who liked to shoot the rats that ran across the cables outside his balcony. Since it was just a BB gun, all it ever did was knock the rats off the wire. It was only about a 10 foot drop, and they'd bounce off the ground and climb back up again. Then he'd shoot them again.

Goatse addiction-now that's an illness that I hope nobody else has to go through.

A couple years ago some of my "friends told me about this nasty website called goatse. They told me to never go there because no amount of brain bleach will make you unsee it. So I avoided it. Whenever I saw a suspicious link I left it alone so as to keep my mind pure. Yet all this time I spent wondering how something could be so disgusting that it would be unforgettable.

One day I broke. I was bored. There was nothing on TV. My favorite message boards were dead. I was about to go insane from the lack of anything to do. Then the thought popped into my head "why not go look at goatse; it can't be THAT bad." Initially I resisted. My friends had warned me well, but eventually I broke. I slowly typed goatse.cx into my browser bar trembling with fear and anticipation. When the page loaded I was horrified. It was even worse than my friends said. I found myself retching because it was so repulsive. Yet I could not tear my eyes away There was something hypnotizing about that distended rectum with hands gripping the sides.

Soon I was spending hours a day on that site doing nothing but staring into that gaping maw. I could not figure out why, but I was hooked on it. The hole had me transfixed. Before long I started adorning my possessions with goatse paraphernalia. While I hid it initially from my friends and family, once I started doing that they knew. Slowly they started to drift away from me one by one. Eventually the only person I saw was my roommate, and that was rarely. After some time I walked back to my computer to gaze at the spread buttocks for several hours when I found my roommate blocking access to my computer. He looked me squarely in the eyes and said "You've got a problem." Initially I protested, but deep down I knew he was right, so after a heated discussion I deleted all the images off my hard drive, peeled the stickers off the lid of my laptop and took the posters down from the walls.

I've been goatse-free for three years now and I do not want to revisit that part of my life ever again.

stop assuming. you have no idea what this person's parents' attitudes and behavior toward alcohol were. i also started smoking weed long before trying alcohol, but my parents were against both and used neither. sometimes people just make informed choices for themselves, try something, and decide if they like it or not.

Who goes straight from the soda pop to the joint? That's pretty messed up. It's like a board game. First you. Must land on the bud light square, then the tequila square, and probably the abusing prescription drugs square.

granddaddy's granddaddy was a proper wifebeating drunk in ireland or germany. alcohol is a familiar. therefore it's ok

meanwhile, look at these mexicans and their loco weed! scary otherness! outlaw that stuff!

seriously. this is the reason marijuana is illegal in the usa:

The first group of states to have marijuana laws in that part of the century were Rocky Mountain and southwestern states. By that, I mean Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana. You didn't have to go anywhere but to the legislative records to find out what had motivated those marijuana laws. The only thing you need to know to understand the early marijuana laws in the southwest and Rocky Mountain areas of this country is to know, that in the period just after 1914, into all of those areas was a substantial migration of Mexicans. They had come across the border in search of better economic conditions, they worked heavily as rural laborers, beet field workers, cotton pickers, things of that sort. And with them, they had brought marijuana.

Basically, none of the white people in these states knew anything about marijuana, and I make a distinction between white people and Mexicans to reflect a distinction that any legislator in one of these states at the time would have made. And all you had to do to find out what motivated the marijuana laws in the Rocky mountain and southwestern states was to go to the legislative records themselves. Probably the best single statement was the statement of a proponent of Texas’ first marijuana law. He said on the floor of the Texas Senate, and I quote, "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff (referring to marijuana) is what makes them crazy." Or, as the proponent of Montana's first marijuana law said, (and imagine this on the floor of the state legislature) and I quote, "Give one of these Mexican beet field workers a couple of puffs on a marijuana cigarette and he thinks he is in the bullring at Barcelona."

If we're going to assume conspiracy, put down the DEA, prisons, and drug cartels as behind it too, since they all benefit (speaking of which anyone who talks about 'securing the border' but opposes legalization is an absolute tool).

I think the real reason is simply that too many people think that legalizing cannabis is condoning drugs and criminals and reefer madness and stupid potheads like Carl Sagan and will cause an unacceptable increase in crime and all this negative imagery, while outlawing alcohol is anti-freedom because it is your right to get drunk and its acceptable some people get flattened by drunk drivers in a free society. I'm not saying it makes any sense whatsoever, but I think it is a more plausible explanation than blaming alcohol and tobacco companies (and I've heard pharmaceutical companies blamed too) companies, unless you have evidence that it is actually happening. Not saying I'd be surprised, I know some of the original push involved paper industry money IIRC that didn't want competition from hemp fiber, just that I'd like hard proof it is corruption as opposed to politicians simply catering to irrationality.

If you follow the money very far you'll find that the banking industry is one of the most opposed to rationalizing drug laws, and it's not hard to figure out why. Money laundering, a.k.a. "private banking" is one of the most lucrative sectors of the financial services industry, with fees averaging 10-15 percent for mostly automated transactions. The US is the world's largest money laundry, with over $1,000,000,000,000 (yeah, a trillion dollars) being laundered here every year, about half of it being related to drugs and the rest to frauds, tax cheats, weapons, etc. How happy would the financial services industry be with their pet congresscritters if $50-$75 billion in almost pure profit were to evaporate? It's so lucrative that Clinton's Treasury Secretary went directly from "public service" to running the private banking branch of CitiCorp, one of the world's biggest money launderers, where he engineered the takeover of BanaMex (a.k.a. 'the drug smuggler's bank of choice') and its extremely valuable customer list.

I highly recommend Catherine Austin Fitts's three-part series called "NarcoDollars for Beginners" found on the Narconews.com web site (it's also mirrored all over, without permission, as "NarcoDollars for Dummies").

No they're not. Marijuana is too easy to produce in finished form. They'd have to continue to outlaw the private production of it, and that would be incredibly difficult for politicians to rationalize (much less enforce) once the drug itself was legal.

Alcohol and tobacco are easier to control because production of a high quality finished product is much more difficult.

Which doesn't necessarily mean that alcohol is some magic gateway drug, (correlation does not imply causation) but that people with substance abuse problems naturally gravitate first to legal (and hence more easily acquirable) substances.

It's more post hoc, ergo proper hoc (after that, therefore because of that). Just because someone tried drug X first does not mean taking drug X caused the person to begin taking other drugs. The very idea of a magic "gateway drug" that if we could get people to stop using would cause people to no longer abuse drugs is ludicrous. It's just a way of making marijuana look bad, because that's been the purported gateway drug for decades. I think alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and aspirin are more likely to be the first drug someone has taken rather than marijuana.

Some drugs are gateway drug. Marijuana got this accusation because it's illegal, and as such often found with other illegal drugs.

and you are stretching the term gateway drug out of it's contexts.

That said, the DARE program mad eit a gateway drug.

Dare pushed the All Recreational drugs a Equally harmful and will ruin you lesson.As such, when these kids grew up and saw that most people who used marijuana lead perfectly normal lives, they made that assumption about all drugs.

Which doesn't necessarily mean that alcohol is some magic gateway drug, (correlation does not imply causation) but that people with substance abuse problems naturally gravitate first to legal (and hence more easily acquirable) substances.

Legal does not mean more easily obtained.

Waaaay back when I was in High School, the legal stuff(e.g. beer) was more difficult to get than the illegal stuff(e.g. weed). You could get all sort of illegal goodies right there in school but alcohol required some effort/coordination. Sure, kids drank in school but as far as the drug market went the illegal stuff was much easier to get.

Anyone who's grown up around people with substance abuse problems already knows this. Everyone I know with drug issues started out with alcohol issues.

Alcohol Issues?

When I was 16, I was buying wine & hard liquor in upstate NY using a fake draft card (back in the day). I didn't have any alcohol issues until my family moved to the South, where the legal drinking age was 21 YO. When my ~ 12 bottle (fifths) of imported NY hooch ran out, I had mixed results getting others (strawman) to buy liquor for me. One of the classmates I drank with shared some cannabis with me, and I switched over. From that time to this, I drink alcohol (always in moderation) on

I've always maintained that the problem is the person, not the substance. Those who abuse drugs (of any kind) are usually carrying emotional or mental health issues they are trying to mask or self medicate through the use of those substances. Alcohol can turn people into assholes, but not everyone turns into an asshole with alcohol. The same goes for other drugs. In fact, people who become sociopaths or who ruin their (or others') lives through substance abuse are the exception and not the rule. There are a lot of people who have smoked pot in their teens and who have never touched it again. There are many, many people who drink regularly and don't beat their wives and children. But there will always be some element of society that loves to hop on one or two unfortunate examples to use them to bully others - because they like telling people what to do. These are the ones who think you should live the way they live because, of course, they are the ones who are right.

Sadly, sense like that contained in your post is entirely too uncommon.

I say this as someone who is completely against recreational drug use (including the drug alcohol) personally, but believe societal prohibitions on them are pointless, merit-less, and entirely without justification. I do, however, support mandatory treatment or punishment (depending on the circumstances) for people who commit crimes as a result of impaired mental function. The reason one cannot control themselves is irrelevant. If they c

studies also show that nearly 100% of hardcore drug users have previously tried water before moving on. the connection is there is no such thing as a gateway drug but every hysterical person on the planet seems to believe that there is.

Bearing in mind that I *agree* with decriminalizing marijuana, you apparently don't understand how studies like this work. If 10% of people who use Substance A end up with Problem X but 80% of people who use Substance B end up with Problem X, there's reason to suggest a link. Yes, correlation is not causation and those aren't actual statistics; I'm speaking hypothetically here. My point is they didn't just randomly pick two events and abitrarily decide they are connected.

They could still be totally wrong, of course, but that's what they do the studies to find out.

I said no to alcohol, because my granddady's an alcoholic. I said no to weed, because I hate stoners and I don't buy into that non-addictive nonsense. Then I was given the opportunity to free-base crack cocaine and I just said take all my money I need my CRACK!!!

Even so, to label something a "gateway drug", you'll have to show a causal relationship, or at least examine the correlation under different conditions.

Case in point: in my home country of the Netherlands, marihuana is (semi-)legal and freely available. Guess what: while there are more people in the Netherlands who have at some point tried marihuana (per capita), the number of regular users is actually lower than in the USA. Furthermore, we do not have a significantly higher number of users of hard drugs either. Which makes sense: the American pushing pot is breaking the law at the risk of a stiff prison sentence. He'll be more likely to cheerfully sell you something more potent as well. In the Netherlands, licensed coffee shop proprietors enjoy a legal and profitable trade in soft drugs; they are unlikely to risk all that by selling hard drugs on the side (besides, they are checked on a regular basis).

It's not the drug itsef that's the gateway to the nastier stuff. It's the person that is selling it to you. Legalising soft drugs doesn't mean allowing a gateway drug into the hands of your youngsters, it means that you're controlling the gateway and making it less likely that kids come into contact with hard drugs.

Ah yes, the membership cards. In the border regions, illegal dealers are back out on the streets in force, selling pot to tourists, whereas before most drugs were sold legally in coffee shops. Crime and disturbances are way up. Which should give the minister of justice pause, one would think, as this card was introduced precisely to reduce problems in neighborhoods around coffee shops.

But there's little rational thought involved in these decisions. The minister pushing this legislation is part of a c

studies also show that nearly 100% of hardcore drug users have previously tried water before moving on. the connection is there is no such thing as a gateway drug but every hysterical person on the planet seems to believe that there is.

But nearly 100% of non-users have also previously tried water. This means there is no correlation between water consumption and hardcore drug usage. That's not at all the same sort of relationship that this study finds between alcohol and drugs.

The idea of a specific drug being a "gateway" to others is incredibly misleading. Alcohol and weed are the obvious places to start because they're the easiest to obtain. You're going to get to harder drugs eventually if you're that type of person, but no one is just going to start at heroin.

I would say that tobacco should be listed as a "the gateway drug" due to it being highly addictive and due to it's place in society and how society uses it. Due to it being highly addictive it changes ones psychological makeup prepping one for further addiction.

Alcohol can be very addicting, but marijuana is only as addictive as masturbation.

In my experience, pot heads who have never smoked tobacco do not go on to harder drugs, while those who have smoked tobacco have a higher rate of addiction to harder d

...and all of those could be said of masturbation as well. Or sex. Or eating sugar/chocolate/food. Or browsing the web. The basic fact is that anything that brings pleasure (and quite a few things that don't) can be addictive to those who are prone to addiction.

Such addictions have little to do with the inherent properties of their object, rather they are due to the manner in which they are used by the addict.

It may be obvious that marijuana is relatively safe to anyone who actually knows about marijuana and alcohol, or cares to research it, but it isn't to those who don't. People who don't know about it are bombarded with media from the war on drugs and conservatives on how bad marijuana is. They really think smoking pot actually does cause harm to those around them, and it should be easy to understand why, with all of the top-down deception happening in the U.S. and other countries.

Pedantically speaking, the sun causes cancer, the air around busy roads contains many times as many toxic particulates as air in the woods, and drinking well water could expose you to radioactive Radon.

Marijuana has not been shown to cause cancer, and has a much lower correlation with lung disease than cigarettes. While you are correct that there are some potential harms in smoking weed, they are no where near significant enough to demonize marijuana over. No one brings up the fact that car exhaust can c

Science is all about formulating a hypothesis, designing an experiment, performing it, and drawing reasonable conclusions which shape new hypotheses. We shouldn't be saying "WELL DUH," as if they shouldn't have bothered to do the study. Instead we should be happy that we have one more sample of interesting data than we had yesterday.

Also, this isn't the smoking gun that anti-prohibition activists might want. One potential conclusion is that prohibition is working, and that logically we should go ahead and outlaw alcohol and tobacco as well to prevent even more teens from becoming filthy marihuana smokers prone to reefer madness.

It's obvious because the only thing the study successfully proves is basic economic theory. Alcohol is more accessible, cheaper, advertised; therefore it is more used, and earlier used, than substances which are harder to obtain, expensive, and illegal. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from this data without delving into sensationalist pseudoscience.

Look I'm as willing as anyone to stipulate that the "war on drugs" has been a total bust and a criminal waste of resources. I've told my teenage daughter "the worst thing about pot -- the absolute worst thing -- is what the government can do to you if they catch you with it".

But.

Could the results have anything to do with alcohol being much easier to acquire than pot? This is not an apples - to - apples comparison, and wouldn't have been unless we had never repealed the eighteenth amendment.

Sure, those of legal age can go into all kinds of stores, bars, or restaurants and get all the booze we want. But the fact that booze is regulated and sold by licensed establishments tends to keep sales to underage buyers fairly low. Sure, teens will still approach strangers to ask them to buy for them, but even that is being cracked down on these days.

The guy selling dime bags doesn't check IDs, and could easily be a friend or schoolmate that travels in the same social circles.

I disagree. Parents, or relatives, or parents of friends are much MUCH more likely to have alcohol at home than pot. Although this is only a single datapoint, I remember how old I was when I had my first drink -- 12 -- and what it was -- rye whiskey (I didn't like it) -- at a friend's house. Seriously, which is more likely in a randomly selected household -- that we kids had found a bottle or a bag?

It's true that weed is fairly easy to come by, and it's also true that people selling drugs probably don't

Cause it isn't grandma's first rodeo and she knows how much booze she has? (She's a grandma, not her first teen.)

You're right. Furthermore, Grandma probably also knows about the trick of watering down the remainder. (Don't ask me how I know.) So you would need to make your samples small across multiple bottles (and mix it together, which I think was called "bilge water" when we drank it as teens -- nasty) or save up samples from Grandma's only bottle over a period of time, and then have a party. It helps if Grandma is gettin' a mite forgetful.

If you live in a state where alcohol is sold right off the store shelves

You may have a point there. I'm the only person in my family who has never smoked. My wife doesn't smoke, and my teenage daughter has so far -- without any coaching from us (we didn't feel it was necessary) -- resisted peer pressure to take up smoking. My sister, who has smoked non-stop since she was 13, now as an adult has a 13 year old foster kid who -- surprise -- just took up smoking.

Here is how the world works:
1. Social science department gets grant from government and special interest groups to do a "study" which will prove something we know.
2. Scientists involved are careful to not make any logical fallacies of starting correlation is causation, but phrase it in such a way as to imply that to those who have difficulty with the concept, in order to get their name in the news.
3. When the study hits the media, all pretense of correlation is thrown out and it is touted as proving some

I've even heard stories about people getting high on this gas called "O2". Apparently it's the new thing with the upper class kids. We obviously need to ban it before it gets out of control. No O2 in My America! A world free of O2!

The whole argument about "gateway" drugs is pointless. People are going to try what's available and what they're comfortable with (what their friends use) first and move on from there. There is no "gateway" as much as a natural progression.

The legal thing is more commonly used than the illegal thing. Next you'll tell me that more injuries are caused due to drinking than pot, without any care for the relative number of people using and/or accessibility of the two compounds.

The only reason the hard drugs exist is because of prohibition. If you have a black market you want the product to be as potent and easily concealable/transportable as possible. Back in prohibition times most alcohol was as high of a percentage as was easy to distill. The same with coke and heroin. Chewing Coca leaves or making tea are the preferred method of consumption in the south american countries where it is grown and legal. Smoking Opium is preferred over shooting heroin. In the US Caffeine is preferred in beverages. If caffeine was made illegal you can bet there would be a black market for it as a concentrated powder or pill. The reason it's easier to OD on hard drugs is due in part to how concentrated they are and how irregular the concentration of active pharmaceutic is.

And we can repeat the 20s, because that went so well for everyone. Hell, it went so well it was the first and last time we actually went and collectively agreed we made a royal fuckup and took measures to fix it.